Books by Gary Graybill

Wednesday, October 8, 2014

Leadership: The First Step

I actually started writing this book 20 years ago when I saw a car lot where
the salesmen was upset about getting promoted to Sales Manager. I asked one of the other salesmen
why the man did not want the promotion and he said they jokingly referred to it as “one step closer to the
exit”.

What was happening was fairly simple. A salesman would excel
at sales and get promoted, but with no management or leadership skills, he
would then fail as a manager and get fired. When I got to digging around I
discovered that this was a fairly common phenomenon in many companies.
Employees with a lot of dedication and job skill get promoted to become
supervisors or managers and then discover that they just do not have the skills
needed to lead and manage people.

Something had to be done.

So, I wrote a short book about
leadership -because before you can manage people effectively you must first become
a leader (thus the title: Leadership: The First Step).

I wanted to cover the basics including personal example,
handling problem employees, management by objective, problem solving,
organization, and just what it takes to become a person people will trust and
follow. It’s a kind of “poor man’s MBA” in 187 pages…

In 2004 it was selected as the text for an introduction
course in Business Management by a Business College (I was the
first instructor for that course). But I never submitted it for general
publication.

Last year I wrote my first fiction spy novel, Operation:
Avenging Dragon and it was published in eBook and paperback formats. After
going through the editing and submission process I thought 'why not submit
Leadership: The First Step?', and see what happens –after all, it
was already written and all I needed to do was re-write a few parts,
edit it and submit it.

It is now available in both eBook (download) and paperback
versions and has had some nice reviews. You can find both versions @ http://amzn.to/ZTSoQd or, if you like, you can read a preview with several excerpts at: http://bit.ly/16XIjqR

So, if you’d like to improve your own leadership skills,
this would be a great and easy way to get started. I hope you’ll check it out.

Gary's Reflection for today:

The
best executive is the one who has sense enough to pick good men to do
what he wants done, and self-restraint enough to keep from meddling with
them while they do it. —Theodore Roosevelt